Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

pixelsand8 said:
Not sure when this was completed just north of Inman Square, but I like it;
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I like this too. Refreshing change from the sad vinyl-sided 2 families and triple deckers.
 
Brad Plaid said:
I like this too. Refreshing change from the sad vinyl-sided 2 families and triple deckers.
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This is the second or third effort from this developer/design team. There is a patch of these on Sherman Street. Nice stuff, but as soon as the owners got hold of them they changed out the railings. I cannot blame them, they seem to be the designers preference but not the future owners.
 
Councilor proposes capping bank branches at current numbers in Harvard, Central and Kendall Squares

Leland Cheung first brought up limiting banks’ presence in July 2012, when North Massachusetts Avenue was being rezoned, but while he was interested in a cap on the number of big-bank locations that would mirror the cap on fast-food eateries at key locations, the focus of city planners during rezoning was on “frontage,” or the amount of storefront a business could put on a sidewalk. The limit was set at 25 feet of frontage.

But big banks keep coming into town “to buy up almost entire blocks and use them essentially as advertising … buying a storefront just to have their name plastered all over it,” Cheung said.
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Unfortunately, the US didn't choose the best solution to this problem -- which would have been to let Citibank, Bank of America, and the other mega-banks fail instead of bailing them out.
 
Ron Newman said:
Unfortunately, the US didn't choose the best solution to this problem -- which would have been to let Citibank, Bank of America, and the other mega-banks fail instead of bailing them out.
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Ron, if the US had let events take their course and let all those banks (and AIG) fail, well, I don't think we'd be seeing all these cranes around the city, we'd still have a gigantic hold in the ground where Filenes used to be along with an empty seaport, and as far as those storefronts in Harvard, Central, and Kendall Squares, they'd probably be quite a few empty ones which would make this city council proposal moot.
 
from Brighton looks like the Mt Aburn observatory is open for the season
 
atlantaden said:
Ron, if the US had let events take their course and let all those banks (and AIG) fail, well, I don't think we'd be seeing all these cranes around the city, we'd still have a gigantic hold in the ground where Filenes used to be along with an empty seaport, and as far as those storefronts in Harvard, Central, and Kendall Squares, they'd probably be quite a few empty ones which would make this city council proposal moot.
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+1. There would have been millions and millions of account holders who would have lost all their savings and instead of LESS business lending, we would have seen ZERO business lending.

Innocently saying "they should have just been allowed to fail" is akin to saying "A good plague would help the overpopulation problem". The fact that the heads of these banks were allowed to skate free is the problem.

There are other ways to attack a problem than just wishing for obliteration.

For me, I believe the banks should have been saved but their managements should have been sanctioned and removed along with heavy PERSONAL financial penalties.

Den, you are completely correct. The activity we see in Boston is BECAUSE those banks were saved.
 
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I look at that uninspired Route 128 type building and then I look at what they are trying to do with the "waterfall" and all I can think of is the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

I'm sorry, there is nothing that can "jazz up" that building.
 
It's very sleek and attractive in person (to me at least). I like the way it communicates that it is a steel structure with the light glass curtain wall and visible columns, rather than trying to pretend to be a masonry building with punch hole windows, or some sort of mishmash of the two like most buildings going up in Boston right now.. If anything, I think making it look like it crashed into an iceberg is going to take away from the sleekness. I will wait until it's done to judge it.
 
See my previous posts about this ... but ...

- They spent a ton of cash on the clear and white glass that can only be appreciated from 30 feet away or closer. Otherwise they spent lots of resources to make a building look like a route 128 spec office building circa 1950.

- The waterfall is, without even being completed, a terrible waste of resources. The amount of technical complexity to making this happen is huge, and there has never been an image nor what is there in reality today that makes me think that any of that value is going to be realized. If they wanted a chance at making that moment a real moment it needed to be on the highway side of the building where someone driving by can get a sense of scale and movement of the faceted glass.

I think this building has a ton of design energy and a ton of money being put into it that gets absolutely zero mileage.

As an aside. I was hanging around the site close to a year ago and the waterfall element was in the same state of incomplete. Does anyone know what the heck is going on with that? To have any element of a building sit for close to a year without any progress is a sign that something is going wrong with that portion of the building. Is this a Berkeley Tower like issue with the installer? Did they not pass their performance mock up tests?

Inquiring minds what to know.

cca
 
cca said:
- They spent a ton of cash on the clear and white glass that can only be appreciated from 30 feet away or closer. Otherwise they spent lots of resources to make a building look like a route 128 spec office building circa 1950.
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This. When you get up close to it the panels they used are stunning. On a building with a large street presence they would be beautiful. But step back a few feet or fly by it at 30+ MPH, and you have no idea. It's really a waste.

The waterfall is gimmicky, although there is a certain angle where this building looks like it's floating directly in the middle of the Charles, so from there it should look pretty cool.
 
The glass is super clear and bright. It looks nice at night, even zooming by on the interstate. This will look nice in winter when it gets dark early but the building is still bustling with activity.

None of that makes up for the silly waterfall gimmick, but the building isn't quite the colossal failure some are making it out to be.
 
fattony said:
The glass is super clear and bright. It looks nice at night, even zooming by on the interstate. This will look nice in winter when it gets dark early but the building is still bustling with activity.

None of that makes up for the silly waterfall gimmick, but the building isn't quite the colossal failure some are making it out to be.
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I want to make sure this is not directed at me. It is not a failure ... but it is a mistake in misplaced resources. Nothing annoys me more than when a designer has resources to work with, spends a lot of money, and makes something (sometimes out of naivete) that just looks cheap and thoughtless. It is clear the designers put lots of thought into this ... its just missing the mark.

Another example of what I am talking about is MIT's media lab. The metal siding used on that project looks like cheap industrial grade corrugated metal siding ..UNTIL .. you get withing 10 feet of it and realize that that panels are EXTRUDED ALUMINUM. Holy crap ... that costs lots of money .. to look like what? Good think that building has other tricks up its sleeve.

cca
 
cca said:
I want to make sure this is not directed at me. It is not a failure ... but it is a mistake in misplaced resources. Nothing annoys me more than when a designer has resources to work with, spends a lot of money, and makes something (sometimes out of naivete) that just looks cheap and thoughtless. It is clear the designers put lots of thought into this ... its just missing the mark.

Another example of what I am talking about is MIT's media lab. The metal siding used on that project looks like cheap industrial grade corrugated metal siding ..UNTIL .. you get withing 10 feet of it and realize that that panels are EXTRUDED ALUMINUM. Holy crap ... that costs lots of money .. to look like what? Good think that building has other tricks up its sleeve.

cca
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Sorry, I did not mean to put words in your mouth (or anyone else's).

I agree with you that this building could have been better for the same cost. They did not skimp on materials or design, but they clearly made poor choices. I agree on all that.

I only disagree that the quality materials are only evident up close. I think the quality of the glass is evident even from the highway when the building is lit up and I think that makes this building distinctly more attractive than your typical 128 office building.
 
Where is the building that the last few posts are discussing? The photo has no description or caption.
 
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